These throwback touches start with the registers which have been slightly edited – most notably the 6 and 9:00 sub-dials which have been enlarged for better legibility. There apparently wasn’t quite enough room on the AUDEMARS PIGUET ROYAL OAK CHRONOGRAPH MEN’S BLACK DIAL 25977ST.OO.D002CR.01 WATCHES dial to enlarge all three, so the running seconds sub-dial at 6:00 has been left the same size as before, while losing its Arabic numerals, resulting in a cleaner distinction of information between all three registers.

If you’ve already noted the new position of the date window, Replica Audemars Piguet Watches consider yourself among an extreme minority that noticed its subtle shift closer to the 5:00 index – a forced relocation as a result of the larger 3:00 sub-dial, and a further disruption to the overall symmetry (if the outgoing variant’s date window at 4:30 could ever be called ‘symmetrical’). Thankfully though, it’s subtle at worst, and likely to go unnoticed by all but a few.

Dial aesthetics aside, from a size and functionality standpoint, the incoming AUDEMARS PIGUET Royal Oak models are still 41mm, and are AUDEMARS PIGUET Royal Oak still fitted with the Caliber 2385 , a column wheel chronograph movement with a long history deployed inside AP chronographs. However, the fact that both the movement and the case dimensions are exactly the same as the predecessor further the mystery as to why AP would tweak a winning formula, seemingly without clear rhyme or reason. If a sportier aesthetic were the goal, these alterations feel more like meddling, than a truly purposeful update. If the latter were the goal, it seems like a tonal sub-dial at 6:00 and a re-balancing of the date window would have granted a cool, “bi-compax” aesthetic that would have been a better means of celebrating the collection’s new contrasting sub-dials – but then again, that particular look is reserved for the nautically-driven Offshore chronograph, and so here we are – arguably “neither here nor there.”